Very high demands are placed on fit and comfort for hygiene pants such as diaper pants for children and sanitary towel pants for adults. The hygiene pants preferably have sufficient elasticity in the transverse direction (i.e., the horizontal direction when the pants are held upright) that they are easy to take off and put on by the user, a parent or a care provider. There is also a preference that they should be soft and textile-like. Hygiene pants, in particular for adult users, are preferably discrete and not bulky, at least in the areas outside the actual absorption unit. Since they are disposable products, the cost is preferably minimized, in particular the costs of materials and manufacture. For cost reasons, the material layers included are preferably as thin as possible. At the same time, quality and strength requirements must be fulfilled.
Hygiene pants, such as diaper pants, preferably resist wear and breakage during use. Hygiene pants can be placed under significant stresses when being put on, for example the pants are stretched when they are being pulled over the user's hips. In particular, longitudinal weld seams connecting front portions to back portions of the garment at the sides of the pant are exposed to considerable stresses.
In traditional hygiene pants, covers have been made of double nonwoven layers with elastic threads lying between these. In welded side seams on this type of cover, there are no fewer than four layers of bonded nonwoven, in which the bonds have not been broken open or weakened in connection with the production of the cover, which can provide a sufficiently strong weld seam.
WO 03/047488 discloses an elastic laminate composed of an elastic film applied between two nonwoven layers. During production of the elastic laminate, these nonwoven layers have been connected to the film, after which the laminate has been stretched until bonds in the nonwoven layer have been broken. As a result, the elasticity of the laminate is largely the same as the elasticity of the elastic film. One disadvantage of this solution is that weld seams in hygiene pants constructed with covers made of such laminates can have considerably less strength than the weld seams on traditional diaper pants.
Other examples of elastic laminates used in construction of hygiene pants are described in PCT applications WO 2005/122984 and WO 2005/122985. In contrast to the production method disclosed in WO 03/047488, the bonds of at least one nonwoven layer have not been completely broken, instead, the layer retains a certain residual strength. PCT applications WO 2005/122984 and WO 2005/122985 describe laminates in which elasticity has been combined with softness and resistance to puncture. However, welded side seams of hygiene pants constructed of laminates described in PCT applications WO 2005/122984 and WO 2005/122985 can still be weaker that the weld seams of traditional pants.
As can be seen from the above, many demands, some of them contradictory, are placed on disposable hygiene pants. Improvements in the art are still to be desired.